[Dabhand16]

Simpbow posted a great shot - View to Glasheady Island in the Sharing and Critique forums recently. The only thing that detracted from it was the sky. Due to the low Sun to the left of the shot (but out of shot), there was a steep colour gradient from right to left. As the eye traveled to the left, or was drawn to the much lighter LHS, the colours faded and changed from a deep purple and gold to a pale yellow.

Simpbow paid some attention to this and the result was much better:



However, I thought there was more to come from this excellent shot so came up with this:



After an exchange of PM's with Simpbow, here is what I did to achieve it.

I first ought to point out that I am in no way an expert in Photoshop, and there are probably other, and maybe better ways of doing this. Also some of my steps might be unnecessary, but it did do what I set out to do, so here goes.

I opened the original image in Photoshop and using the rectangular marquee tool selected the RHS of the sky to the horizon. I made the LHS of the selection just a bit over half way so the selected area was more than half of the sky. I feathered by about 5 pixels as this was a low res image. On a normal file this would be more like 50 pixels.

I copied this selection onto a new layer (ctl+j). I then cloned out the elements in the bottom of the image - the rocks and hills. Next, I flipped the image horizontally to make it a mirror image. This is in a menu - can't remember where offhand as I'm using my laptop and it does not have PS installed.

At this point I saved the layer as an independent image by deleting the other layers and doing a 'save as'. At least if it all went pear-shaped I had the sky saved. You could carry on from this point without saving.

I then opened the original image again, and dragged the sky onto the original image with the move tool, then closed the sky file. We now have two layers - the original and the sky.

Selecting the sky layer, we can now move it around with the move tool. I positioned it on the LHS of the original. Using the eraser with a soft brush at a low opacity (around 10-15%), I went around the joins to blend the patch in and reveal the land and island on the original that had been obscured. I also varied the brush size using a larger brush on the sky to sky join and a small one on the sky to land join.

This step could be done with a layer mask, probably with more control, so worth exploring rather than my eraser method.

Next came some cloning at low opacity (3-15%) and again, with a soft brush to tidy it all up. I varied the opacity, the brush size and the source points, and was quite pleased with the result.

There was much use if ctl+z (step back!) and use of the history palette, especially if I used too high an opacity in the erasing and cloning.

It actually took me a lot less time to do it than this tutorial suggests, although I would say that it could have a better result with more time spent.

[simpbow]

Cheers for that Dabhand, I'll give that ago & see what i can get& some rep points are on their way to you for your time & effort.

[Dabhand16]

Thank you

I'm pleased you liked the result too.

[simpbow]

Cheers Dabhand, the very first image above is the one that i have re-edited & done as Dabhand had said, the only change i did do was to use a layer-mask but Dabhand had said that anyway, my editing skills wouldn't be the best but i found this straight forward to do, great tip if you ever need to use it. Many thanks to Dahhand for his help.

[Sonsey]

That'll be a useful technique when I start using the wide angle again, thanks Dabs!.

[Dabhand16]

This image lent itself well to this method due to the uncomplicated horizon, but I think it should work for non-seascapes too, it will just mean more work at the masking stage.

[simpbow]

This was my final image.